Word: shows
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...least some of the names in the 1979 exhibition−which includes 110 objects by 56 painters and sculptors, along with programs of film and video work by 32 other artists−are not likely to be known to most museum visitors. What the five curators who chose the show have given us is a pan around a diverse, though often bland horizon, rather than a squared-up essay in the dominance of some historical direction. And rightly so: one lesson of the past ten years in American art has been that movements have vanished with the death...
...best large sculpture in the show is a delicate construction of wooden slats, curled and woven through one another and supported on pebbles, by Michael Singer. Its ancestor is Giacometti's famous surrealist construction of the 1930s, The Palace at 4 a.m.−there is a similar feeling of spindliness, fragility and, isolated in its museum cell, of mystery. Though it suggests other cultures (bamboo lattices, fish traps, grave-marker posts), it does not do so in a sloppy, metaphorical way. At 33, Singer is clearly an artist worth watching...
...Asimovian retort goes: "There is something about satyriasis/ That arouses psychiatrists' biases,/ But we're both very pleased/ We're in this way diseased/ As the damsel who's waiting to try us is." Thus: Though their poetry centers on mating,/ Both men show very few signs of dating./ Still their comedy's salty/ And their taste somewhat faulty,/ So their book gets a solid X rating...
...like an act of chivalry for Neil Simon to bestow his tonic comic gifts on a season as arid as this one has been. Of course, he has able assistance in this musical that, according to a program note, is "loosely based on the real-life relationship between the show's composer Marvin Hamlisch and its lyricist Carole Bayer Sager." Perhaps that is why the sharp crackle of humor in They 're Playing Our Song seems to emanate from a warming log fire of shared humanity...
Although Simon rarely deals with young people or with bright show-biz professionals, his tart and wacky one-liners are in perfect accord with the temperaments of his hero and heroine. The show is very New Yorky in mood, with an opening backdrop of the Manhattan skyline that is like a bas-relief of tinseled Christmas trees. A top-name pop composer. Vernon Gersch (Robert Klein), surveys the scene from his luxury apartment where he first meets Sonia Walsk (Lucie Arnaz), an aspiring lyricist much in awe of his success. When she picks up his solid-gold Oscar...